Hours: Monday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m.; weekends, the restaurant is open 24/7 from Friday at 7 a.m. to Sunday at 9 p.m.

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PORTSMOUTH — What do you get when you combine an eccentric woman with a love for the Salvation Army, two English degrees and zero experience in cooking?

A successful, eclectic restaurant that no one can get enough of, called the Friendly Toast, and its owner, Melissa Jasper, who is full of flashy style and charm.

The Friendly Toast has humble beginnings, a unique place in the present and a future blurred with potential uncertainties.

Jasper, who was unable to find decent scrambled eggs in the morning before heading off to teach English at the University of New Hampshire, decided she would have to cook them herself, in her own restaurant, and opened the Friendly Toast in Dover in 1994.

After 1½ years in the Dover location, the Friendly Toast moved to the site of the infamous Danish Health Club in Kittery, Maine.

"We had all sorts of issues and problems and, consequently, fun stories (about the goings on at the massage parlor)," said Jasper with a smile.

So when the Congress Street location in Portsmouth opened up, the restaurant moved into it in four days, Jasper said. That was in 1996.

The Friendly Toast has 150 seats and 36 colorful employees cooking the food and waiting on the tables. The staff is known for their signature tattoos and shabby-chic style of work wear.

These hardworking employees are Jasper's friends.

"That's why they all have the same sort of look," she said. "Sometimes we have people come through who seem very normal and we are always confused by that, and then they leave after a short period of time."

The Friendly Toast is all about Jasper staying true to herself, and the artwork on the restaurant walls enhances that feeling. Some may say it's bad or tacky art, but Jasper finds a true beauty — and sometimes innocence — in the art.

"I always felt that the cheap and undiscovered stuff had a certain excitement that other, regular, expensive stuff didn't have," said Jasper. "I'm in love with thrift store art, for real, not for irony."

There are several customers who have wanted to buy the art, but it is not for sale.

One day, however, an old man and his friend came in to eat. The older man was shocked to discover that he had painted one of the portraits on the wall back in 1957. The friend he was dining with was the man in the portrait.

The men were from Massachusetts, and couldn't imagine how the portrait ever wound up in the Portsmouth restaurant. Jasper was taken with the men, and they went home with their painting.

More than anything else, people come to the Friendly Toast for the food and, of course, the toast, which is yeast-risen, homemade bread, baked in the restaurant seven days a week.

Along with the thick slabs of toast there are the rest of the food items, which are made from scratch using only quality ingredients.

Jasper is adamant about food quality, from the kitchen to the table.

"I tell all the cooks, 'I'll never yell at anybody for throwing something away or redoing something. Don't make anything that looks bad, or you wouldn't want to eat.'" she said. "That's the only thing I care about. I know that's what makes the business as stable as it is."

Jasper is glad she owns a restaurant.

"I feel it is a little more recession proof than the more expensive places," she said.

Jasper may be beating the recession, but she may be getting beat up by what the Friendly Toast has helped Portsmouth to become: a clean, inviting port city with a great variety of restaurants and shops to enjoy.

With this new and improved city comes higher rents or the request from landlords to buy the property outright. In Jasper's case, the selling price was $1 million.

"Just for this tiny spot in the building, these cement walls," said Jasper.

Her rent has risen, but she can rest easy at least for the next 10 years, which is the length of her present lease. After that, it is hard to tell what will happen, she said.

Jasper has considered selling the restaurant down the road, if it comes to that. She has also put a blurb on the back of her menu that reads, "We are interested in opening another location and are looking for investors to profit-share with us. If you are curious, e-mail us at pixietoast@comcast.net."

With an investor, a second location is possible. Jasper has considered Newburyport, Mass., or the Boston area for expansion.

Wherever the Friendly Toast may be, it will have a draw that can't be denied.

"Restaurant people seem to go about it backwards," she said. "They have a business plan first as opposed to a passion for something.

"They make the place look like they think it should look like, and the food is about cost," said Jasper. "It just doesn't seem intuitive to me."